Gallaecia in the context of "Paulus Orosius"

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Roman Republic, it was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Roman Empire, under the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was subdivided into Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was reorganized as Hispania Tarraconensis.

Beginning with Diocletian’s Tetrarchy (AD 293), the territory of Tarraconensis was further divided to create the provinces of Carthaginensis and Gallaecia (also called Callaecia, the origin of the name of modern Galicia). All the Hispanic provinces on the mainland, together with the Balearic Islands and the North African province of Mauretania Tingitana, were later organized into the Diocesis Hispaniarum, governed by a vicarius.

The Vandals were a Germanic people who were first mentioned in the written records as the inhabitants of what is now Poland, during the period of the Roman Empire. Much later, in the 5th century, a group of Vandals led by kings established Vandal kingdoms, first within the Iberian Peninsula, and then in the western Mediterranean islands and North Africa.

Archaeologists associate the early Vandals with the Przeworsk culture, which has led to some authors equating them to the Lugii, who were another group of Germanic peoples associated with that same archaeological culture and region. Expanding into Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and into Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle from Constantine the Great. Around 400, raids by the Huns from the east forced many Germanic tribes to migrate west into the territory of the Roman Empire and, fearing that they might be targeted next, the Vandals were also pushed westwards, crossing the Rhine into Gaul along with other tribes in 406. In 409, the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, where the Hasdingi and the Silingi settled in Gallaecia (northwest Iberia) and Baetica (south-central Iberia).

Gallaecian or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic is the name given to a pre-Roman Celtic language, spoken by the ancient Gallaeci in northwestern Iberia. The linguistic situation of pre-Roman north-west Iberia is complex, as it includes inscriptions that contain clearly Celtic linguistic features and others that do not and are probably related to Lusitanian. The region became the Roman province of Gallaecia, which is now divided between the Spanish regions of Galicia, the western parts of Asturias, León and Zamora, and the Norte Region of Portugal.

Sisebut (Latin: Sisebutus; Spanish: Sisebuto; also Sisebuth, Sisebur, Sisebod or Sigebut; c. 565 – February 621) was King of the Visigoths and ruler of Hispania, Gallaecia, and Septimania from 612 until his death in 621. His rule was marked by forced Christian conversion, anti-Judaic measures, Roman-like administration, and intellectual cosmopolitanism.

Hispania Ulterior (English: "Further Hispania", or occasionally "Thither Hispania") was a Roman province located in Hispania (on the Iberian Peninsula) during the Roman Republic, roughly located in Baetica and in the Guadalquivir valley of modern Spain and extending to all of Lusitania (modern Portugal, Extremadura and a small part of Salamanca province) and Gallaecia (modern Northern Portugal and Galicia). Its capital was Corduba.

Magnus Maximus (Classical Latin: [ˈmaːgnus ˈmaːksimus]; died 28 August 388) was Roman emperor in the West from 383 to 388. He usurped the throne from emperor Gratian.

Born in Gallaecia, he served as an officer in Britain under Theodosius the Elder during the Great Conspiracy. In 383, he was proclaimed emperor in Britannia, and in Gaul the next year, while Gratian's brother Valentinian II retained Italy, Pannonia, Hispania, and Africa. In 387, Maximus's ambitions led him to invade Italy, resulting in his defeat by Theodosius I at the Battle of Poetovio in 388. In the view of some historians, his death marked the end of direct imperial presence in Northern Gaul and Britannia.